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Category Archives: Daydreams

I dreamed a dream this autumn morn and woke with this in my mind – ’twas a scene from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (which portion, below, I consign!)

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in…”

I’m not sure what why I dreamed this dream (tho’ it was very pretty), but oh! how I would rather live in that dream than here on the edge of a city!

(yeah, pretty corny, but I really did wake up from a dream where I was daydreaming by the banks of a pond, surrounded by the most lovely, sweet scented wild flowers. I was so disappointed when I realized it was all in my mind…not disappointed, however, that mine did not follow Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream!)

Even in poetry, do I find inspiration. Case in point: the poem, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, was a 17th century work by English poet Robert Herrick which has had the power to gently urge me to write now, before my own words fade. From this poem we understand Herrick’s belief that life is very short, that the world is beautiful and love is splendid. Above all else, we must use the very short time that we are here to make the most of that life, leaving negative tendencies by the wayside and not to rely on fate to dictate the terms of life to us.

The older I get, the more I feel the same. Negativity has been banished from my vocabulary, for the most part, as has the word ‘can’t’. Even though I must live in this world with eyes wide open, seeing the harshness of reality, fortunately I’m able to dream…and write. I can think of no better inspirational quote than that by Tom Schulman, the screenwriter: “But only in their dreams can men be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”

~ To the Virgins, Make Much of Time ~

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And, while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

Writing is my way of ‘gathering rosebuds’, I suppose, even if the tendency is to go cautiously – so cautiously, sometimes, that I cease to make the effort. I may not be the virginal maiden to whom he speaks, but Herrick’s poem is certainly an inspiration for me to make much more of my time.

Mama had the biggest heart in the world – as a matter of fact, if she had ever grown as big as her heart, she would have needed a telescope to see down onto the peak of the tallest mountain in the world.

Instead, she had to wear that heart in a tiny, 5′ tall frame.

Mama also had a temper, and when someone pulled at her last nerve (usually me, methinks!), she was HUGE!!

Have you ever watched the old Walt Disney cartoon musical, “Fantasia”? There’s a part where Micky Mouse, as the wizard’s apprentice, tries his hand at using the wizard’s magic wand to cut corners whilst cleaning…with disastrous results.

The wizard is not impressed when he comes upon the destruction Micky has wrought.

He grows in height and his eyes…oooo’! His eyes turn huge and black, his eyebrows thicken, rise up to the top of his forehead and join together in a massive, black “M” and he turns into a roiling, crashing waves, bolts of lightening, thunderous, storm of a wizard!

That was Mama when she finally succumbed to anger. Scary. No. Terrifying. The woman didn’t have to raise a hand to put the fear of God into you, if you were the unfortunate fool in her sights.

She was glorious!!

Mama never cussed. The strongest words she had were:

“What the Sam Hill?!!”

“I’ll be John Brown!”

“Don’t make me come over there!”

“I do declare!”

Heck

Darn

Doggone and

(no words, just ‘that look’)!

But even though these were the words she spoke, what you heard, if you were the cause of her angst, would turn the air blue! The feeling and passion in her always came out in her words (and demeanor!).

It was that same passion of expression that made Mama the best storyteller imaginable…and what made me the way I am with words.

Mama loved words. I love words.

Today is her birthday. She would be 85.

I’m missing you with all my heart, Mama. Happy birthday. And thank you.

Mama at 69…still giggling after all those years…

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My husband got into an accident a few days ago and wound up with five fractured ribs. While this may have been great inspiration for the writer of a medical novel, it better suited me to take a few days off from writing. So I spent this week contemplating life, art, God, writing and Roger Moore, poet 😏

Now, the day after hubby got busted up, I took a walk to the corner store, about 3/4 mile away. I’ve not spent much time outside lately because of a nagging, sometimes debilitating health issue, so I was really soaking up the sun and fresh air on my way there. The sky was beautiful behind the various types of clouds floating around, and the sun was wonderfully brilliant, though it hurt my eyes even with my ‘blu-blocker’ sunglasses on.

Nature is beautiful; regardless of 97° heat and humidity, it never ceases to be awe inspiring. The slight whooshing sound as a breeze travels through a stand of Australian pine, cicadas singing so loudly that you can barely hear yourself think, watching the changing shapes of the clouds looming over the tree tops and the rainbow colours that appear where the clouds drift in front of the sun…well, let’s face it – God is indeed the Master Artist.

On my way back home, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the sky. With the sun at my back, it was much easier to study all those wonderful, blooming, bright white clouds that were slowly mixing with the angry looking storm clouds heading in from the west. Iridescent pastels and golds never disappear, even when they are overlaid with a myriad of values of grey.

Who hasn’t looked at clouds and seen pictures! I saw a porcupine, a pig, a woman’s head with one of those Greek goddess style upswept hair-do’s and at the top of a particularly spectacular configuration, I even saw a replica of one of those huge statues of Christ the Redeemer, like the one in the Andes Mountains, between Argentina and Chile, just south of Mt. Aconcagua (nearly the same as the one we’ve seen on television during this year’s Olympics in Brazil). I mean, watching these clouds billow into forms just made me smile.

They seemed like such happy little clouds…hmmm.

Does anyone remember Bob Ross? He was a wonderful artist, well known even to this day because of his decade long television series, “The Joy of Painting”. He was then, and still is today (although he passed away from cancer many decades ago), famous for adding, as he put it, “happy little clouds” and “happy little trees” to his paintings (Melody Sheep/PBS did a music mix, “Bob Ross: Happy Little Clouds” here). Studying the sky that day, a random, perhaps nonsensical, thought occurred to me that God was ready for another assistant to share His status as Master Artist, so He invited Bob Ross to join his wife in heaven, just so we might all still be able to enjoy his happy little clouds!

I seem to be able to find inspiration in abundance, through my own thoughts and memories or by sheer chance…like when I’m “introduced” to people via social media or through my blog here. Sometimes it’s because of personal interaction with others, sometimes it’s because I have been touched by another’s writing.

My most recent ‘for instance’ was day before yesterday when I really spent time reading the works of contemporary poet, Roger Moore (no, not the erstwhile “007” – – – the other Roger Moore!). I was so entranced that I Googled him and wound up reading far more than he shares on his blog. In fact, I found myself so engrossed in his short stories, prose and poetry that before I knew it, I had spent 3 hours in the the company of his work…and gained much inspiration for my book(s).

Now, Roger Moore, art, ‘happy little clouds’, memories and God are not the only places I find inspiration. I don’t just follow bloggers, tweeters and posters…I read what you all write. I have found that my time on the internet would be very dull without you!

Off and on throughout my life, I will have the same dreams, not always night after night, but always the same ones, intermittently, for years…sometimes decades. And then one day, I will find myself wide awake, in the same surroundings as one of those dreams, and even in the midst of the same actions that occurred in it, and never have that particular dream again. Have you ever had a dream like that?

It’s like deja vu’, on steroids.

The mind is so strange. Will we ever truly understand its workings? or will it remain, “just one of those mysteries”?

Those dreams, though…last night I had one that I recall dreaming when I was just a wee child.